Sean's Organic Tattoo

It's always interesting when you meet people with a lot of tattoos. Unless someone volunteers to catalog their entire collection (case I point here), I generally ask folks to share just one with us here on Tattoosday.

The problem there is that asking someone to pick one tattoo to offer up is often like asking someone to select their favorite child among their brood of kids. They're all special in their own way and most generally equally-loved.

So when I ran into Sean, who has eleven tattoos, there was some debate. We were going to do his right leg piece, but it wrapped around the majority of the calf, and I didn't think it would come out well because of the multiple angles. This is why you don't see a lot of sleevework on Tattoosday.

The "OUCH" tattooed inside his lower lip was funny, but it's just a word in a strange spot, and not very artistic. We considered for a moment the lipstick imprint of a kiss. But that one was on his butt, and it just didn't seem right to be photographing someone's posterior on Seventh Avenue.

So we went with a tattoo on his right forearm which doesn't totally wrap around the arm:



















This was Sean's first tattoo that was drawn on free-hand. He liked the organic colors in the design and just let the artist do her thing.


It took about four hours for Tina Forever at Resurrection Tattoo in Austin, Texas, to complete the piece.

Thanks to Sean for sharing his tattoo with us here on Tattoosday!

The Tattooed Poets Project: Rachel Mallino's Vine Entwines

Today's tattoo is from Rachel Mallino:

Rachel explains this tattoo:

"This piece was done in the summer of 2001, on a vacation to New York City. A friend and I were walking the Village together and I decided to stop at a random tattoo parlor- unfortunately, the name of the parlor escapes me. I had been playing around with the idea of getting a tattoo on my foot for several reasons, one of them being that the foot was not a popular place to have a tattoo at the time. I wanted something like a vine that symbolized my very unhealthy relationship with my mother, a subject I also write a lot about. I didn’t have anything sketched out, so I approached one of the artists and told her what I wanted. She was able to find a ready-made outline of a vine that looked similar to what I had imagined. I told her to use the outline but directed her in which direction and how I wanted the tat to wrap around my middle toe, up the foot and around my ankle. For the record: it was really painful. Artistically, I don’t think the tattoo is spectacular. Conceptually, I’m pretty pleased. People ask me all the time what it means, and I never tell them. In fact, I haven’t really told you, either."

Thanks to Rachel for sending us this tattoo.

Please head over to BillyBlog to read one of Rachel's poems here.